Questions

Choose Great Over Safe

Posted on by Aaron Hogan

We’re really good at avoiding worst case scenarios. So good, in fact, that this can almost dominate our thinking.

What would change if we started to make decisions based on the best that could happen instead of the worst that could happen?

I’m not advocating being foolish or irresponsible in our choices. It’s important that we’re good stewards of the time we have with students, and I’m certainly not pushing for haphazard decision making.

However, I wonder if we’re so good at making the safest choice that we’re missing out on opportunities that could serve students well. If the fear of the unknown drives us, then it’s time to reevaluate a few things.

We cannot allow ourselves to be motivated by fear of the unknown. Constantly hedging our bets will only push us to live so cautiously, as J.K. Rowling put it to Harvard graduates in 2008, that we “might not have lived at all – in which case [we] fail by default.”

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So, since I’m sure you’re not in the mood to “fail by default,” what’s the best that could happen as a result of your willingness to try a few things next year (even a few that might fail)?

What’s the best that could happen from choosing to think the best about others throughout your day at school?

What’s the best that could happen from giving that teacher a fresh start this year?

What’s the best that could happen from assuming that educators who aren’t connected still want to get on Twitter?

What’s the best that could happen from your encouragement to a student to sign up for a more rigorous class next year?

What’s the best that could happen from rethinking your bell schedule or your routines to start the day?

What’s the best that could happen from giving the toughest kid in your school, maybe the one who was arrested over the summer (maybe even arrested again) or the one who everyone hopes isn’t in their class or the one who “can’t be controlled” the benefit of the doubt and a fresh start?

What’s the best that could happen from choosing to go a week without complaining?

What’s the best that could happen from celebrating great things on your campus via social media?

What’s the best that could happen if you gave just one good idea a shot?WHY NOT CHOOSE SOMETHING (1)

It’s worth noting that something will go wrong along the way. We have to be ok with that. That doesn’t mean it will be easy, or that we won’t receive some critical feedback along the way.

Why not choose something great over something safe? (tweet this)

The beginning of the year will be here before you know it, and how you start the year deeply influenced the patterns you will maintain over the course of this school year.

Are you willing to do something that’s a little scary in order to accomplish something great?

After all, what’s the best that could happen?

1 Comment

Choice in Professional Development

Posted on by Aaron Hogan

choice (1)In college, I distinctly remember a professor reading me PowerPoint slides about how students don’t actually learn when teachers just read slideshow presentations. I wish I was making it up, but it’s absolutely true.

Though much of that class was incredibly frustrating for me, it turns out she was wrong about one thing that day. This day, yes the diligent reading of PowerPoint slides, might be the clearest lesson I remember from my education classes, but not because of anything she set out to do. I remember what she said because of the experience it brought me into (unfortunately for her, that was me staring blankly at my classmates wondering silently why we were paying college tuition for this).

Fast forward a few years with me.

I’m an assistant principal now, and I’m a big believer in the idea that giving students choices and providing them with a “just right” challenge makes learning relevant and accessible for all learners (no matter what age). As much as I’ve circled around those ideas, it was time to model that for the staff.

The goal I set was simple: create a memorable experience that demonstrates the power of choice in learning. For the day to be a success, that has to happen. In addition, I hope the their learning experience serves a model that could be easily transferred to the classroom (all of it or the parts of it that fit well).

We do our teachers a disservice when our

With a bit of trepidation, I’d like to share how I hope to make that happen (at least as it is right now). This is what our morning on the Thursday before school will look like:

Everyone will attend three sessions of their choosing. We’ll follow that with a break and a debrief and discussion time. The whole process will take three hours.

Sessions will be classified as presentations (traditional delivery), conversations (flat leadership, plan to participate), and maker sessions (just what it sounds like). We’ll likely have about 20% presentations, 50% conversations, and 30% maker sessions. Teachers will choose three sessions to attend (mix and match however the schedule allows) over the first two hours.

Admittedly, this is not as wide open as choice gets. There are great ways to push the bounds of open choice further with a genius hour or an EdCamp for campus PD, but those aren’t exactly what I’m looking for. Choice is a familiar idea, and the timing isn’t right to drop something brand new on the staff.

Here’s a tentative schedule of the sessions. We’ll have inspirational videos, tips from our social emotional learning team, conversations on topics all teachers struggle with, time to make thank you or You Matter cards, and I’ve even toyed around with having an open gym for a session. I’m probably most excited about three student led sessions that I expect to be quite popular. Overall, the hope is to have every session focus on knowledge, skills, or motivation that will help teachers on the first day or during the first week (though a few might not be realized until later in the first month).

After teachers complete their sessions, we’ll have a short break before coming back together to debrief and discuss their experience. During that time, we’ll reflect on these questions:

  • How was this morning like your students’ learning experience? How was it different?
  • What impact does the timing of this PD have on you? How does that impact your concern for pressures students face? (This is currently scheduled for the Thursday before school begins on a Monday.)
  • What ways did your choices this morning differentiate for your interests? Your ability level? Your sense of urgency about outside concerns?
  • What did you end up learning that you can share with your colleagues?

My hope is that the morning creates a time where teachers have a chance to really choose what they need. Maybe they’ve been presenting all week and what they need is to be on the receiving end of some PD. Maybe they don’t need anyone to tell them what to do, but they do have some questions they need help with. Maybe they need to hear from those students in the student led sessions before they start the year. Maybe they need the uplifting, inspirational shot in the arm. Maybe they’re all thought out by Thursday morning and they need to do something with their hands that will still impact students positively.

I don’t know exactly what they need, but they certainly don’t all need the same things.

I also hope this honors the challenges we put on our teachers throughout the year. Be engaging. Differentiate for all students. Make sure your students are writing in class. Keep up with all your paperwork. And the list goes on…

We do our teachers a disservice when our PD fails to model best practices. (tweet this)

My challenge to you isn’t to make PD sessions on choice.

Your people all need something different. The challenge is to figure out what the teachers need on your campus and try something new (even something that might fail) in front of the staff at the beginning of the year that will stretch you and them. Be willing to ask this question: what sort of learning would keep teachers from looking at the time wondering, When can I get into my room to work?

Before it’s too late, share what you create. Don’t wait until you can revise it based on what you know worked (or so you can leave it as a draft if the whole things blows up).

Your work can serve as both inspiration to others and a point of departure as we explore how to serve teachers well through professional development.

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Because I Often Forget

Posted on by Aaron Hogan

With so many educator voices out there, it’s easy to feel like you don’t have anything to contribute to the conversation.

I know this because I’ve felt this way before. I’m mentioning this now because I felt this way this weekend.

Luckily I came across a video last week that helped my perspective a great deal on this issue. I’d like to share it with you.

I love that question: “Are you holding back something that seems too obvious to share?” That’s so powerful for me because I can talk myself out of a good idea really quickly if I’m not careful. I’ll find a safer route, I’ll bottle up that idea, and then I’ll be frustrated with myself for not speaking up, writing that post, etc.

The other end of this is that I watched that video last week, Tweeted about it, and then felt like I didn’t have anything else to say.

Because I still managed to forget its message in a few days, I wanted to share the message the video brings. Even if it just ends up being for me. That’s enough to make it worth it.

There are a lot of voices receiving a lot of attention right now. Huge education conferences provide the opportunity for some voices to be amplified to untold numbers of educators. We need those amplified voices. Many of them are our champions, our role models, and our friends.

The thing is, we need your voice, too.

I’m not the first person to tell you this, and I won’t be the last person to tell you this, but I’d rather it be said too often than not enough.

You have something to say, and your voice matters.

Your idea may be just what someone needs to hear. Share it! (tweet this)

1 Comment

I Feel Like a Fake

Posted on by Aaron Hogan

Confession time–I feel like a fake.

Earlier this week I decided to take on a new challenge: sketchnoting. I saw a tweet that pointed me to some resources and provided a few manageable first steps.

That afternoon, I found a copy of Mike Rohde’s The Sketchnote Workbook in town and bought a stylus to help me out (because, let’s be honest, I need all the help and confidence I can get). I got to work, and to make a long story short, here’s what I was able to put together by the end of the night:

IMG_0440Since I was pretty proud of how much I had accomplished, I shared my work with the world.

That looks great, right? I’m no artist, and that looks like I’m at least competent (if you disagree, you’re probably right… but no need to crush my dreams here). It looks great to see that eight hours after first considering the idea I’m taking care of business with a halfway decent sketchnote that’s ready to be shared on Twitter, right? But there’s a problem with this.

The problem is that if you look at where I actually started, it looks something more like this:

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The actual first attempt–practicing writing my letters (and not doing a great job)

I wasn’t about to share that. That’s what I work on with my 3 year old; it’s not what I need help with.

Except that it is.

It’s exactly where I needed to start. I needed the basics, and I  needed the eraser end of that stylus more than anything.

It didn’t take long for me to realize (1) that it was good for me to be working on something I enjoyed that stretched me and (2) that I needed to be more honest about my weaknesses and limitations

There’s no place for shame in learning. (tweet this)

There’s a lot of talk about the value of risk in education right now. It’s hard to spend much time reading online without coming across something–a new study, a new TED talk, a new insight in a tweet–that doesn’t touch on the value of trying something new.

But my experience hiding my first steps that I wasn’t proud of made me begin to wonder this:

At what point does an educator’s talk about risk become a safe place for him to hide? (tweet this)

We like safety, but I think we’ve done a good job of bringing the value of risk into our conversations. Still, I think we have room to grow in living out the implications of those conversations.

The frustrating thing to me is that I’ve been sitting on this “there’s value in risk/you can learn through failure” idea for far too long.

In the classroom, J.K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Address on the importance of imagination and the benefits of failure served as a point of departure for this conversation with students. Before I had every heard of Carol Dweck, I knew these ideas were important for people to consider. I don’t share that to say that I’ve been talking about this forever and it’s old hat for me. I share it to say that I’ve had this idea right in front of me since 2009, and I’ve done less with it than I should have.

Today is the last day of my contract for 2014-2015. We’re taking off on a little vacation for the better part of next week, but after we return, I am trying to set goals for professional growth that are fun and challenging. One of those is to get sketchnoting developed into a useful skill, but the bigger goal is to do what we so often ask teachers and students: try something new and learn through your failures.

I encourage you to do the same.

After all these years in education, what can you say?

Posted on by Aaron Hogan

Sometimes the bad things that happen in (1)
Educators aren’t immune to seeing greener grass elsewhere. It often feels like other people have it together. Maybe it’s that he can get anyone to behave in his classroom. Maybe it’s that she’s a master at this or that. Maybe it’s that she can get her grading done and manage to both see her family and sleep at night.

For many of us, this situation is complicated by rumors that float throughout the education community (things like “Year X will be when it gets easier” and other generalized half-truths).

On the way to school yesterday I heard a song by Andrew Peterson (@AndrewPeterson) that included these lines:

After all this time
I thought that the rhythms and the rhymes
Would come so easy
But it’s still so hard
It’s the same twelve notes, six strings,
And a million little mysteries
And one broken heart

As I listened to him sing these words about his expectations for himself, I began to realize that educators must feel the same way. There are only so many variables. I have my room, the skills I need to teach, and a group of students to teach. Sure, there are many variables, but the basics are the same, year in and year out.

You would think that it would get a lot easier, right? That it would be automatic.

I’m sure many educators let this roll off them without much thought. But I bet there are more than you’d think who are wondering if they are the only ones who haven’t figured it all out yet. Surely there are many thinking: Is it just me who hasn’t figured out how to make this easier?

All that got me wondering how educators would finish this statement: “After all this time…”

Would they say they still don’t sleep well before the first day of school? Would they say they’re still hopeful that this group of students will be the best they’ve ever had? Would they say they’re still having trouble balancing what they can give to their students with what they can give to their families? Would they say they’ve been given more than they could ever give back?

Here’s what I’d say after all my years in education (which, I know, is only 7, but I’m still phrasing this in these terms…):

After all these years in education
I’d think the lessons and the time would come so easy,
but some days it’s still so hard.
It’s the same struggles to help our kids succeed
and the same efforts to provide them what they need,
and, at times, it seems it takes more than I’ve got.
Though some days are tough and it seems easy to give up,
in hindsight,
no days serving students are a waste.

The reality is that our work as educators is tough. We do a great job of being positive in all sorts of different ways, and we have to keep that up. I think there’s room for us to be authentic about the struggles that come along with educating students without us being complainers, and I hope to open up some of that conversation with this invitation:

After all these years in education, what can you say? (tweet this)

3 Comments

5 Things We Need to Quit Pretending

Posted on by Aaron Hogan

I stumbled upon a couple of posts over the weekend highlighting 5 things we need to stop pretending in education. Here’s my contribution (in no particular order).

We need to stop pretending…

1) That the way we talk about incoming students (new to a class or new to a school) has no impact on the way we treat them when they arrive. How we speak of people impacts what we believe about them more than most realize. If you’re not talking about how to welcome the next group in or how to help those students be successful, be wary of talking about them at all.

2) That compliant students are engaged in learning. I’m all for having students who are willing participants in class. Compliance can be a byproduct of engagement or willingness to fail or take on new challenges, but observing compliance doesn’t indicate with any degree of certainty that those good things are happening. We (yes, we, everyone responsible for what’s happening in the classroom) must look for more as we check to see that our students are challenged well during their learning.

3) That behavior doesn’t need to be taught and retaught. We know that brains forget academic content, and most likely, we’re doing things in our classrooms to reteach even basic information like test taking strategies. Don’t believe me? Walk down the halls at your school the day before major tests (state mandated or otherwise) and look at the reviews teachers are leading. We need to use those same practices (teaching with great models, repeated review with variation for novelty, etc.) as we teach our students to be responsible decision makers in life.

4) That you can do your job as an educator well without taking some time to recharge. You need to take some time for yourself. Maybe you don’t need as much time as others on your campus. Maybe work is a lot of fun for you. Maybe learning is part of your relaxation. I’m ok with those lines of logic. But everyone (even you) needs to take some time to recharge. This is especially true as the students get tired. It’s not noble to tough it out; it’s not even what is best for students. Take care of yourself so that the tank isn’t empty when students need you most.

5) That we have it figured out. Anyone who isn’t looking to keep learning needs a wake up call, especially educators. You don’t need to be a 24/7 connected educator with an active PLN and PLC who participates in a book study or blogs every night you aren’t hosting a Twitter chat in order to say that you’re continuing to learn. Find what you’re passionate about, use it to stretch yourself as an educator, and share both the struggles and successes with other learners around you (both students and peers).

If you disagree with me, let me know. I’m happy to talk about my perspective and learn from yours.

I’m challenging @Mann4Edu, @J_Stew314, @stormyhickman1, and @BClarksonTX to share 5 things we need to quit pretending.

1 Comment

Did he really know better?

Posted on by Aaron Hogan

A few years ago I was asked a simple question that has impacted nearly every academic or behavior conversation I’ve had since. Sitting in a training (with admittedly low expectations), this question surprised me:

If a student in your class made a mistake on an academic assignment, would it make sense to say, “You knew better than that” and move on expecting more from the student the next time?

You’d be hard pressed to find any research based teaching practices to back this tactic for academic purposes, but nearly anyone with teaching experience has seen this line of logic applied. Most have done it themselves. I did it, too. On particularly stressful days, I’ve found myself falling into my old habits more than I’d like.

This mentality creeps in not when we’re providing instruction on academic content, but it appears regularly when we address inappropriate behavior on campus. The reality is, we expect our students to know how to behave before they enter the door.

Much to the chagrin of some, our expectations for student behavior have to be taught for students to become the young men and women we hope to graduate from our schools. Still, in too many schools, that’s what we often do with student mistakes regarding behavior.

The more I’ve thought about it and read about it, the more I believe the issue is less about differing perspectives regarding the way we teach our academic concepts or correct identified behavior concerns. It’s much more closely tied into how the brain works and how people learn. Without looking at how we learn, we’re going to fall short teaching both academic content and behavior expectations to students.

Brains forget (2)

More than likely, you have a vast repertoire of covert and overt methods of reteaching your academic standards to struggling students in your classroom. Maybe you intervene by asking the student where he or she got stuck (or figure this out by asking the student to explain his process for solving the problem for you). Maybe you ask one of his peers who understands the process to step in and teach the concept in a different way. Maybe you produce something visually that helps make sure you and your student are on the same page. Regardless of the particulars of your strategy, you have many effective options at your disposal.

Think about how powerful it would be to teach behavior with the same fervor and authenticity and passion on your campus. Next time you are frustrated by the way your students are behaving, remember that (in all likelihood), they’re not actively trying to drive you up the wall. Their brains forget and think of an inventive, novel way to reteach your expectations.

Reframe your best teaching practices for teaching behavior expectations and reap the benefits of a classroom and campus where nobody has to guess about behavior expectations.

While this sounds easy in some respects, so does good teaching (and we know what a challenge–albeit a very rewarding challenge–good teaching can be).

Brains forget (1)

Here’s a model based on our first attempts at my school. Keep in mind that this is intended to be a model to spur you on to think of what will work for your learners on your campus. This was a start down the road toward the answer; not the answer. I hope it’s a decent first step in the right direction.

My goal was to keep in mind the principles of learning our district was refining and use them to clearly present a very brief overview of how people learn and reiterate our campus expectations for a few situations that had the tendency to escalate unnecessarily.

So, knowing that I have no future in a career as a video narrator and that I will do a lot differently next year, here’s a link to a video we showed our students that hits on a few of these issues.

Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear what you’re doing to help students learn how to learn.